Beastlands

You are the revelation
You want to get it right
And it's a conversation
I just can't have tonight

No Light No Light, Florence + the Machine

Raistlin's throat ached. He had woken with red marks across his neck, a moment before Fistandantilus' axe had carved off his head. The lich's laughter still ringing in his ears, he had been out of the tent before the guard had had time to shout for Caramon.

And by the time Caramon had found him, it was too late. Crysania came, eyes glazed and mad in her own fervour. The plainsmen came, glad to be out of the mountains and moving, and the dwarves had needed no prompting. Only the knights had balked, but even they came in the end, rather than being left behind with the pathetically denuded remnants of the army.

Raistlin rubbed his throat; he couldn't help it. The collar of his robes was harsh against the raw skin, and he could still feel Fistandantilus' hands clenched around his neck. He could look in the mirror and try and convince himself those were from his own hands, that the lich's skeletal fingers would have gouged deeper, left more than just scratches-

But that was irrelevant. In the end, whether he died at Fistandantilus' hands or by his own madness, he would die regardless. Perhaps it was a good sign that the Queen of Darkness suspected what he was planning, and was sending Fistandantilus' tormented spirit after him. All it told Raistlin was that unless he wanted to die in very short order, they would have to take Zhaman at once. He wasn't sure he'd survive many more nights like this.

"You ride with us now, mage?" The plainsman's eyes were narrowed. "Where were you in our battle yesterday?"

"I do not have the strength to bring down two fortresses," Raistlin answered coolly. "I expected you would prefer I expend my power on Thorbardin itself."

The plainsman nodded stiffly, the dwarves seemed satisfied. Crysania turned, frowning. "You assured me we were riding to Zhaman," she accused, "not to continue this-"

Gods below. "Once we have reached Zhaman," Raistlin said sharply, "you will all see the truth of my power." He looked between them, and all three nodded, satisfied at least enough not to continue this line of questioning.

The army was moving by the time Caramon found them. On foot, thank the damned gods. Raistlin turned his horse as his brother approached. "You ordered me to complete a task," he sneered, "I am completing it. I am sorry if it displeases you."

"Not like this!" Caramon roared. "You know we can't march without supplies!"

Raistlin shrugged. "What do you care? They will not be coming back. What do the dead care for supplies?"

"What are you talking about?" Caramon drew his sword. Raistlin's horse backed away quickly, Raistlin held it tight to keep it from rearing at the steel.

"You pushed me down this road, brother." Raistlin half laughed, "You pushed, the gods pulled, and here we all are. Down the road that leads to the destruction of Zhaman and the burning of this land. These men will die, as the gods will it, their bones will litter the Plains of Dust – where we will find them in three hundred years. Or did you forget that time along with every other wit in your head?"

"And you-" Caramon turned to Crysania. "You too? You support him in this?"

Crysania wavered, then straightened. "The men are already dead, Caramon," she said finally, voice cold. "The most we can do is to make sure their deaths are not in vain. Can you not see? In destroying the Dark Queen, we do more than honor your brother's memory, we will prevent thousand- millions more such deaths."

Caramon looked at Raistlin. Raistlin looked back. He thought, for a moment, of reaching out to him, through magic and the damned blood that still bound them. Then turned away. There was nothing to say. There had been nothing to say ever since Caramon had first looked through Fistandantilus' stolen eyes, behind the Wall, and seen Raistlin screaming inside his own head. And had done nothing.

"You don't need the army," Caramon called after them. "I'll warn them, tell them the battle is doomed-"

Raistlin laughed, unable to help it. "And see if you have any chance in having them believe you! I have stood in that place far too often, brother, I would not recommend it."

Then, there was nothing for Caramon to do than go back, don his golden armor, and follow the army as it trooped out of the gates of Pax Tharkas. Raistlin saw him briefly, riding beside him, before he pulled ahead to the fore of the army.

But his were not the only eyes on his brother. Raistlin saw the Dewar watching their general, eyes bright and hungry. Raistlin looked away, the angry triumph turning dull and sick inside him.

The blasted, detested horse died on the fourth day. The animal had been trembling since morning, half mad with lack of water and food. Raistlin had had to walk for most of the day, and as they set up camp in the evening, the horse had collapsed and not gotten up again.

Raistlin sighed, wondered if he should end the wretched beast's misery – but by the looks of the soldiers around him, he needn't worry. In fact, he should probably leave them to it unless he wanted to end up in the pot too.

He turned and walked away quickly, but not so quickly that he missed the last, desperate scream from the downed animal as it was rapidly butchered. The horses were suffering more than the men, but not by much. Raistlin had heard stories of men gone mad with thirst in the desert, so mad they turned on their own to drink the very fluids from each other's bodies. He had paid the tales little heed at the time beyond agreeing with Dalamar to avoid deserts. Now, he looked around at the sunken-eyed men, their lips cracked and bleeding, and considered his and Crysania's odds of making it to Zhaman on their own. They were not high.

He ducked into the tent they were forced to share, and sat in his corner. Crysania briefly looked up as he came in, then settled back on her bedroll, turning her medallion over and over in her hands, lips moving in silent communion. Caramon did not look up at all, looking down at some papers in his hands. Records of their dwindling supplies, most likely.

"I could summon water," Crysania murmured, as though to herself, "but not for so many men. Unless we find a waterhole-"

"I know!" Caramon looked up, furious. His face was growing sunken too, Raistlin noted dispassionately. He himself ate so little normally that the short rations had not affected him, and like Crysania, he had his own means of creating water. Caramon, however, was starting to suffer from the forced march and the lack of food.

Looking at the wild-haired, furious man before him, Raistlin wondered who he was. Who they all were, carved off from their pasts and lost. Every shred of their old identities dropping away meaninglessly until even Caramon snarling Fistandantilus at him had little effect. He was not Fistandantilus, any more than he was Raistlin Majere. The names had lost their meanings. They were three lost strangers bound together by the madness of the gods and the chains of fate.

Raistlin roused himself as Caramon repeated whatever he was saying. "Oh sit down." He hunched over his books, read over the chant that would open the Portal. Not much longer now, at last- "And finish your dinner. You're the one starting to resemble the dead-"

The ground under his feet jumped. Raistlin looked down in alarm – an earthquake? The loose stones bounced up again, as though in anticipation of a landslide, and the ground crashed away under them.

Raistlin threw himself backwards, the spellbook flying out of his hands and landing in the corner of the tent. He drove his staff into the still-solid ground by the tent poles, and scuttled clear of the huge, gaping hole that had appeared in the middle of the tent.

The hole rang with the sounds of steel. Caramon and – dwarves, most likely. Gods, he'd seen the remains of the tunnels in Thorbardin, but hadn't considered they could stretch this far. Fistandantilus had no memory of this, so either this attempt had failed in his time, or Raistlin had successfully angered the dwarves even more thoroughly than the lich had.

Crysania shouting something inaudible under the din of battle and Raistlin's eyes widened at the sight of a dwarf standing over him, hammer raised. A few words had the hammer flying wide and out of the tent, tearing a hole in the fabric. He stood shakily, feet sliding on the still uncertain ground and – what in the Abyss was this? What possible purpose did this serve? Was this the Dark Queen's doing? Reorx'? No one and the dwarves were being allowed more freedom in their actions than he was? Raistlin bared his teeth and raised his hands, entirely prepared to blast the idiot dwarf into oblivion-

Then, with a sound like lighting striking ground, there was a flash and Raistlin and the dwarf were no longer the only ones in the tent.

"Raistlin!" A shockingly familiar and far too unwelcome voice shouted. "Is that you? I told Gnimsh to get us to you. I've got the most wonderful story to tell and you won't believe what we found-"

"This is not the moment!" Raistlin ducked just in time as the dwarf tried to decapitate him with a short sword. Close, too close. He'd sparred a little before, but those half-joking practices with Dalamar had little or nothing applicable to this moment. The dwarf lunged in with a follow-up strike that tore through Raistlin's robes at the waist, drew a thin line of blood and coming a hair's breadth of spilling his guts across the floor.

And it would. Because Tasslehoff was here, and, as Raistlin had dreamed, over and over, the kender's presence could change time. In this case, change it bloodily, painfully and terminally.

"Hey – get away!" For a moment, light flared from the hole as Crysania blinded another dwarf, and Raistlin saw Tasslehoff's worried face. "He's our friend! Raistlin, we can go, we can go home-"

He moved forward to grab the dwarf, but was shaken off like an annoying fly. The dwarf turned, black eyes fixed on Raistlin in determination.

And Raistlin could not move, could not breathe. Because Tasslehoff was holding it. High and clenched in his hands like a crude club to hit the dwarf. The light flared off the facets of the jewels, sheered off the gold and silver. The whole, glittering wonder and potential and beautiful, beautiful hope of the Device of Time Travelling.

"Gnimsh fixed it-" Tasslehoff shouted. "We can all go-"

But then the dwarf was on top of him; and the sword bit hot and tight and burning into his back, and the world faded into blood and the sound and taste and certainty of his own death.

Everything went black and grey, the sword was pulled from his body with an earth-shattering shudder that made his failing, stunned heart stutter in his chest. Raistlin pulled in a breath, another. It hurt more than he could imagine; black ice in his back and gut, but he was breathing. Every breath meant he was still alive. Somewhere far away, he heard Tasslehoff screaming and shouts in dwarven.

Breathe. Breathe. He forced his mind through the pain and fixed on the Device. He had seen it. It was whole and Raistlin had no idea how it had come out of the Abyss, or even if it was the same one – but it was real. He had seen it. Tasslehoff had it. All he had to do was not die. All he had to do was to keep breathing, force air into his tattered, failing lungs, breath by breath. Damn Paladine, where was that cleric? The one thing she had sworn to do, the deranged, maddened hope of her life and she was going to let it bleed out in front of her?

"Fistandantilus?" Her voice felt like it came from everywhere at once. From the ground under him, the air around him, the very bones in his body. "You – they hurt you."

Yes. Well done. Your powers of observation are unmatched. Raistlin tried to say something, but all that came up was a hiss of stale air and a mouthful of gore. He managed to open his eyes, stared across the black field of his own blood at the cleric.

"I will heal you!" Crysania knelt beside him, and Raistlin closed his eyes. His breathing was coming faster, come on, damn you. He was dying, his body struggling to force more air into him as his blood poured out across the floor. No. He would not die here. Even an hour ago he would not have cared but he had hope again, a desperate grasp at escape and he would not die-

Then the light came, and death suddenly seemed grossly more palatable.

It had no colour, not even white, and it burned. It seared across Raistlin's body as though he disgusted it, as though he was a grub hiding under some stone that had suddenly been upturned and exposed to the stripping, merciless sun.

The god's gaze beat down on him like a hammer on iron, white hot and forging. Melting his flesh back into whatever components composed it and resealing the wound. Raistlin opened his mouth but he couldn't even scream; it hurt too much. He could only bare his teeth like a beaten dog, a futile, worthless threat. With a last wrench of effort, he opened his eyes.

He could feel His pity, His mocking false mercy for this repellent, helpless creature under His gaze. You feel so sorrowful, you let me go. Raistlin shouted in his own head. He knew He could hear. You made this nightmare, you placed me here, don't you darepity me now.

The light faded, Raistlin gasped, and his breath came deeper, more easily. He blinked and the darkness of the tent suffocated him, only the lone flicker of the lantern breaking the featureless black. He blinked and blinked until the world slowly faded back into view. He felt as though he had been beaten, every joint aching and his back raw to the point that the touch of his robes was agony. But he managed to sit up, although he had to cling to a tent pole and it cost him a coughing fit.

His head swam, half his blood was currently decorating the floor and Paladine must have been feeling displeased at his thanklessness, because it hadn't been replaced. He licked his lips, and found his waterskin under a bundle of blankets. He drank ravenously.

Crysania was watching him warily. "What were dwarves doing here?"

"How would you expect me to know that?" Raistlin snapped, looked around. Tasslehoff was gone. "Where is the kender?"

"The kender?" She frowned. "I think – I saw the dwarves carrying a kender and a gnome, they were shouting, but I could not make out-"

"Stop." Raistlin rubbed his face. Gods, nothing could even be that simple, could it? "The dwarves have him."

Taking them back to Thorbardin, then. Raistlin had no interest in the place before but – he could go there. He had been before and remembered some of the oldest parts of the city, parts that had been untouched by the destruction of Zhaman. He could teleport there, and find Tasslehoff and the Device. He wouldn't be able to take anyone else with him and maybe part of him felt a little sorry for Tasslehoff – but the kender would doubtlessly find something to occupy himself in the past. He would go home. Really go home. He'd had enough of playing with the past. He'd go back to his own time before anything else had time to go wrong and – and he didn't know. He'd lost his spellbooks, lost any riches he'd had. He'd decide when he got there. Anywhere was better than here.

He found his staff, and got to his feet, wavered and leant hard on it, feeling as weak and trembling as he had ever been, after his Test. Gods, to sleep. To just close his eyes and forget the world for a few hours-

And dream, over and over again, of Fistandantilus decapitating him. Those hooked, claw-hands clenched around his throat, every night coming a little closer to throttling him.

Raistlin took a deep breath, and tried to think. The dwarves would be heading to Thorbardin, but it would take them a few days to reach it. They would make Zhaman in a few days. He would wait until they had reached the tower, and then go to the dwarf city and find Tasslehoff. He closed his eyes and drew up a rough map of the city in his mind's eye. He remembered where the dungeons were.

The knights were coming over and moving the tent to somewhere that didn't have an enormous hole in the floor. Caramon was somewhere else, recovering from a blow on the head. Raistlin half wondered if Tasslehoff might have a point; and the blow might have knocked something loose in his brother's thick head. He remembered the letters, no, of course not.

He was sitting on his bedroll and wondering if he dared to sleep between Fistandantilus and murderous dwarves bursting from the ground, when Caramon stomped in. His face was like thunder. "The dwarves left me a message," he snapped, and threw a piece of parchment at him.

Raistlin caught it, unrolled it. The wizard has betrayed you and the army. Send a messenger to Thorbardin to learn the truth.

He looked up at Caramon's furious face. "And?" He threw it to the dirt.

"You deny it?" Caramon growled.

"You deny planning to kill me after I've fulfilled your dearly departed's last request?" Raistlin lay down carefully on the bedroll, everything still hurt. "Pardon me for trying to protect myself."

Caramon had no answer to that, although Raistlin could almost hear his teeth grinding. "If you have quite finished-" Raistlin started.

"Your life belongs to Paladine now, mage." Oh Abyss, not both of them. Crysania ducked into the tent. Her face was pale, alight with power, a pale reflection of the light Raistlin had burnt under, but a reflection nonetheless; his soul crawled at the sight of it. "This was the answer to my prayers. Paladine walks with us. This is the sign from the gods we have all sought."

"And is this the answer we wanted?" Caramon crossed his arms.

"We placed the matter in Paladine's hands and the god has spoken. Fistandantilus was meant to live. He was meant to do this great deed. Once it has been done, then perhaps Paladine with withdraw his hand, then His will be done."

His will, Caramon's sword, and her bare hands. Raistlin felt a furious, terrifying urge to get up and run. Get out of this tent and away from these murderous lunatics, and go – anywhere. Anywhere but here.

He was so tired.

Not just tired in body, but sick and tired in soul. He was sick of hating these people, this place. Sick of being so alone and so lost. A barren plain of a life where blades hungered for him from all sides, with no stone against which to set his back and face his foes. Let this end. Please, by the magic Raistlin would butcher this entire army and his brother and the cleric too with his bare hands if only it would let this end.

"Together, he and I and you, if you will join us, will fight and overcome evil as I have fought and overcome death this night!"

Zhaman felt – warm. Warmer than Palanthas had been, at least. There was the echo of life here. Fierce magic and great power that still vibrated through the walls, even after so many decades. Raistlin closed his eyes and rested a hand on the wall. He wondered what would happen to this place, once he had gone. Would it be destroyed in some other disaster, the gods choosing another poor fool to take Raistlin's place? Or would it stand, straight and tall and beautiful, into Raistlin's own time?

He felt his thoughts touch the magic fabric within the building, but it faded almost at once. The speck of doubt banished by the stone-deep certainty of the building, the mindless awareness that it had stood and would always stand, though Cataclysm and destruction and war. Raistlin let go with a sigh, and stepped inside. If it did survive then – maybe it would make a good place to aim for, when he returned to his own time. A quiet place to stay, until he decided what he was going to do with himself.

He was not paying attention where he was going, lost in his own thoughts, and maybe his mind had snatched up one of Fistandantilus' memories of the place to run on, because when he next looked up – he stopped, and started back.

The Portal.

Raistlin hesitated, tried to turn away, but his eyes were drawn back to the still, shimmering surface of the gate. He couldn't quite see through it, not yet, but it was already beginning to fracture before his eyes, peeling back layer after layer to almost but not quite let him see past, into the Abyss. It was silent, unmoving, but the eyes of the dragons seemed to follow him, locked hungrily, mouths open as though eager to taste his flesh-

Enough. Raistlin started to turn away, determined to march out of this place and not return. He would go home. The Portal and the whole of Zhaman could fall into the Abyss for all he cared-

The mouths of the dragons seemed to smile and he thought he heard, far away – yet at the same time far too close – a woman's laughter. His own plans seemed petty and pathetic before the Portal. An infant's dreams and plaintive wails. I want to go home. Thrown back at him, mocking. The demands of a child, the weeping of a helpless fool.

The surface of the Portal shuddered, fractured like frost falling from a leaf. The fury and hate of the Goddess trapped beyond. Raistlin held his ground, staring into the darkness as he had stared into Paladine's light. Hate and pity, mindless rage and hypocritical mercy. He let them wash over him, held strong within the fortress of his own mind, watching it break against the Wall. He was beyond their reach, for now, they knew he could face them, and somewhere deep within, they feared him.

For a moment, he could see it. The memories surged up like the tide – and they were not his. He was standing before the blazing portal, magic in his hands, alive in his body. The ultimate challenge, the ultimate reward. Not only to destroy a god, but to take Her place. To know power untasted by any mortal before him, to make them all suffer, the mocking, dancing clowns that ran this madness of a world-

No! Raistlin screamed within his own head and wrenched his mind back to himself. He had spent seven years fighting that mad lich; he wasn't going to fall into its trap now.

But the potential-

Shut up!

But the power-

I don't want it! Raistlin screamed, so loudly in his own head that the memories fell silent. Not like this! Not by its hands! I will have it by my own will, from my own hands. I will not be tempted into following the footsteps of an undead idiot who failed, and was just too stupid to know when to die!

The silence that followed was so ringing that Raistlin wondered if he had been shouting, but his throat would have been sore after that. He looked back at the Portal once more, but it was unmoving, the dragon's heads just that – carved iron around a dragonsteel frame. Raistlin slammed the door firmly and turned around. He'd have more luck in the dungeons. Time to put his plan into effect. One last plan, one last throw of the dice to escape this trap and leave once and for all.

Time to pay the kender a visit.